Love Israel familiy's summer gathering celebrates garlic

By JENNIFER LANGSTON, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, July 16, 2003

ARLINGTON -- The Love Israel Family, the religious community that got its start on Queen Anne Hill in the 1960s and declared bankruptcy in March, is hosting its annual Garlic Festival next month to showcase the Arlington ranch it is trying to save.

The summer gathering, which will be Aug. 8-10, started 14 years ago as a small potluck celebration of the family's organic garlic harvest. The event now draws 12,000 to 15,000 visitors for a weekend of music, food, camping, crafts and dancing hosted by the counterculture group.

The family's members are bound by shared spiritual revelations and decades of communal life. Members who remained loyal to leader Love Israel after an internal rift eventually moved to Snohomish County. A string of failed moneymaking ventures such as an upscale Arlington bistro and a woodworking business led the group into heavy debt.

A bankruptcy judge has granted the group until October to find a way to pay back more than $3 million in bank loans or lose the 300-acre wooded property.

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The bucolic property is dotted with cabins, yurts, lakes, a greenhouse and a renovated barn. Rather than lose it all to developers, the clan hopes to turn the land into a family resort community. The group is looking for 300 small investors to each buy an acre share of the property.

That money would be used to save the ranch from foreclosure and launch development plans to build sites for motor homes, cabins, yurts, a lodge, dining hall and recreational amenities. Those plans have not been approved by the county, which has long contended that the family's clustered dwellings violate subdivision-zoning codes.

The partners would have priority use of the facilities -- as well as the family's undeveloped property next to a winery in Eastern Washington. Some might use the space as a weekend rural retreat, while others might live there permanently, said family spokesman Serious Israel.

The Garlic Festival has always been an open invitation for the public to learn about the family's communal and spiritual lifestyle, in which members take "virtue" names such as Charity, Pure or Clean and assume the last name of Israel.